Scam victims have lost $1 trillion this year globally

Corrections & Clarifications: A previous version of this story included data provided to USA TODAY that misstated the amount lost to scams globally last year. It was $1.026 billion.
Scammers have bilked victims worldwide out of a staggering $1.03 trillion in the last 12 months, according to a new report.
That number is up from $1.026 trillion lost last year, according to the 2024 Global State of Scams report, conducted by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance in partnership with Feedzai, a company that helps financial institutions manage their fraud.
The latest annual report drew insights from more than 58,000 respondents worldwide.
The hardest hit victims were in the U.S., where the average loss per scam victim was $3,520, followed by victims in Demark and Switzerland, who lose $3,067 and $2,980 respectively.
While the $1 trillion in losses is a stunning number – and could be underreported since often people are too ashamed or embarrassed to report they are a victim of a scam – there are some silver linings in the report, said Jas Anand, a Feedzai senior fraud executive who leads the North American fraud team.
“I think the biggest improvement was really in education and the ability for people to confidently spot scams,” Anand told USA TODAY.
Sixty-seven percent of survey respondents said they know what a scam looks like. 
“Now, what’s not very helpful there is that even though people are educated, the rate of attack of scams is irrespective of how well educated they think they are or whether they can spot scams, so that’s not very encouraging,” Anand said.
Here’s some other highlights from the global scam report:
There has been a significant increase in the use of artificial intelligence in scams, said Anand. That can include the grandparent scam, where scammers are now taking a photo off social media and sending fake mug shots to grandparents or making a deepfake voice recording using the grandchild’s voice to ask for help.
“The capability to convince people of the scam using AI has increased significantly,” he said.
AI was also used to call a fake meeting where deepfakes of a company CEO and CFO in the video meeting convinced an employee to send $20 million to scammers, Anand said.
Losses for fraud victims hitting more than $1 trillion globally is surprising, but not unexpected, said Eva Velasquez, president and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center. Velasquez is a featured speaker at a Global Anti-Scam Alliance conference next week and was familiar with the study.
“The scammers are getting much better at not only social engineering, not only talking people out of large dollar amounts in one fell swoop, but being able to build relationships with people in a way that they can continue to get them to self-compromise not only their data but their dollars, which can start reaching six figures,” Velasquez told USA TODAY.
A report released recently by Velasquez’s organization also provides some insights into the specific impact on scam victims and in particular identity theft victims.
Among some of the findings from a survey of both general consumers and victims who reported their crimes to the organization:
Romance scam:A widow opened herself up to new love. Instead, she was catfished for a million dollars.
Here are some tips from Anand and some previously reported and commonly shared tips from the Identity Theft Resource Center:
This story has been updated to fix an incorrect statistic.
Betty Lin-Fisher is a consumer reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] or follow her on X, Facebook or Instagram @blinfisher. Sign up for our free The Daily Money newsletter, which will include consumer news on Fridays,here.